


Everywhere

by AParisianShakespearean



Series: Dragon Age One Shots [30]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Angst, F/M, Ferelden, Folklore, Gift Giving, Kinloch Hold, Love Letters, Mutual Pining, Templar Cullen Rutherford, Unrequited Crush, Unrequited Love, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-15
Updated: 2019-03-15
Packaged: 2019-11-18 15:50:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18123317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AParisianShakespearean/pseuds/AParisianShakespearean
Summary: He doesn’t know what love is. All the same, he feels something when he sees her. It can’t be love, because he doesn’t think he’s earned the pleasure of the word. It's something, all the same.***Cullen reflects during Solona Amell's last few weeks at Kinloch Hold.





	Everywhere

**Author's Note:**

  * For [savbakk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/savbakk/gifts).



> Wrote this for @savbakk! Also check out her work on tumblr :)

The not quite boy yet not yet man from Honnleath stands tall and proud in the library of Kinloch Hold. He’s nineteen and sometimes he thinks about the steely lyrium vial he drinks every morning and every night. He feels more attuned, more aware of his surroundings, powerful. Invincible even. He’s a knight of old, as he always wanted to be. He may not take up his sword and adventure Ferelden as they did, but he watches Kinloch Hold with a quiet, contemplative eye. He stands ready.

He thinks of what his mother said in her last letter. _I’m so proud of you_ , sent along with treats of fresh baked cinnamon bread. It wasn’t as good as it would have been had it been fresh, but it was enough to make him miss home. She even sent him a copy of _Cliodna, and other myths and legends from Ferelden folklore_. There were so many stories he treasured from that book, but the story of the Avvar priestess Cliodna, who roamed the world on her white horse, looking for the one she loved was his favorite. It’s still his favorite. Now, the book sits on his bedside table for him to reread at night. He’s already read it twice. The words, though the same words from before, are just as wonderful, and the new illustrations vibrantly bring the words to life. Mum used to read the story and act out different voices, and he, Rosalie, Bran and Mia would all sit huddled around her. It’s like when Solona reads to the little ones. She always acts out the voices, tells every story with passion, holding the tome with one hand while the other gestures. He’d like to see her become Cliodna one day. He thinks she’d be a wonderful Cliodna.

He doesn’t know what love is. All the same, he feels something when he sees her. It can’t be love, because he doesn’t think he’s earned the pleasure of the word. Yet it is something, especially with the few letters they’ve exchanged. _You’re warm, and you’re good._ she wrote him last, Cullen hiding behind a bookshelf in the library after hours, devouring every word. _I wish we could just be a boy and a girl under a tree, just holding hands. Isn’t that the strangest thing to want? But I do. I want us to be us._

 _You’re the brightest part of my day,_ he wrote back, sticking the letter in the book she was reading. _I want to be there with you._

Often he sees her in the library, her nose buried in a book. They’re both there now, standing only a few feet apart. It feels like so little and it feels like a wide sea. Few things pull Solona from a book, but sometimes he can feel her eyes flitter over to his frame. He blushes when that happens. He thinks about her too often and sees her too little—that’s why evenings are so precious. All the better, because there are fewer people around. She’s the quiet one, with the dark brown braid and brown eyes that are warm. Tall, though he is still taller, strong. Kissed by the sun even though she cannot live in the sun. Mage’s robes are like templar uniforms, they aren’t made for flattering one’s appearance, but she makes the robe suit her frame. Irving speaks well of her and even Greagoir speaks of her talents, though Greagoir wishes she wouldn’t choose the company she chooses. Rumors and whispers have spread about her friend, Jowan, and how he’s turned to blood magic, though there’s no proof yet, and Greagoir waits for more information.

Her Harrowing is soon. During the morning and evening prayers, when he should be asking the Maker for strength to carry on his sacred duty, he asks Him to bring her safety.

Solona peers over the book. He looks away from her. It’s a game they often play, if you could call it that. He tried so hard to hide it, still tries, though the others tell him it’s a bad idea. She is trouble, Bevel says sometimes, all mages are trouble. Cullen tells him not to, he’s wrong. He doesn’t share that wariness so many others do. Why are you so caught? They all ask the same.

Maybe it was it her soft, low contralto that thanked him once when he picked up a book for her that had fallen to the floor. Maybe it was the kindness she displayed in the way she taught the young mages. Maybe it was just when he helped her reach a book she couldn’t reach, his glove hand touched hers and she was warm.

He’s caught because she’s her. He feels himself caught every day, especially as she passes by him and smiles. He can’t wait for that smile every day. He can’t wait for every evening when they’re together. That’s all he needs and wants—just them together. He blooms when they’re together.

He stands while she sits and lounges. She tucks a stray lock of hair behind her ear, and there is no question in his mind, she notices him noticing her. He thinks she chuckles behind her book. It’s a new one, as earlier she finished the one with the note he left inside. He saw her stick it in her back pocket to be read later. He wrote of summer days, perhaps she reads of summer days in her book.

Curious, he looks at the title. She reads of Cliodna.

He blossoms. Solona and he are so different, yet the most wonderful things link them. She reads Cliodna, and other myths and legends from Ferelden folklore and he thinks of the conversations they could have. She certainly can’t be there yet, but he wonders if she would feel as he did when he was a child, and his mother got to the part in the story where Cliodna asked where the one she loved was, and the Lady of the Skies told her look around, and Cliodna saw the one she loved everywhere. The fact that they read the same book was already so much.

He thinks they have another thing in common too, or at least, he hopes. He hopes that they both like each other. And maybe it’s not love, but perhaps it veers to it.

It’s such a raggedy book she has, with illustrations long faded. He thinks of the one his mother brought him. The blue of Cliodna’s eyes pop, her dark hair luxuriant like Solona’s.

When they part for the night, he writes one more note. He sticks it in his mother’s book.

 

* * *

 

The book, Solona finds the next night, is not where she left it. What has taken it’s place is a different version of the same book, much less worn, newer, with a note inside. She opens it and finds the note is in the same place she stopped reading the previous evening. The same book of _Cliodna and different myths and legends of Ferelden,_ but it is vibrant, it is alive. It is Cullen’s.

 _Solona,_ the note says, take this. _My mother used to read it to us when we were little. I should warn you, you may cry at the end. I know I did. Cullen._

Cullen is not there that night—he must have been called away. In fact, no one is there save Solona and Cliodna. She wishes he could be there, she likes it better when he is. He makes her feel good and more than what they say she is. But she reads the book and sees Cliodna on her white horse, roaming the lands and searching for her lost love. The illustrations take her far and away from the Circle, and by the end of the story, when she reaches that part where the Lady of the Skies tells Cliodna that she never lost the one she loved, and he is everywhere, she has to quickly wipe away her tear, so it will not ruin the image of a free Cliodna, her arms spread, her hair in the wind, sinking into the stars.

She reads it again that night in her room by candlelight. She then takes a piece of parchment and scribbles her note to him. He is there the next evening, thankfully, and the only other person in the library besides her and him—Niall, is asleep on one of the desks. Even so, she wordlessly lets it be known that she is behind the shelves. He follows.

They speak with nothing but their eyes of Cliodna and her revelation of how the ones you love never truly leave you, and they are everywhere. I loved it, I loved it, she says with her enthusiastic nod, her sparkling eyes. Thank you Cullen, thank you.

She hands it back to him. He shakes his head.

“It’s yours,” he says.

She stares. “Cullen, you said your mother brought it to you. I can’t—”

It shocks her, that its one of the few, if only words they have spoken directly to each other. Yet he doesn’t speak again, perhaps that might break the spell. Instead, he breaks the distance between them ever so slightly. His hand, though gloved in leather, rests against her cheek. It’s a kiss but not a kiss. Precious all the same.

She takes the note out of the book and hands it to him. It speaks of how she still wants what he says he wants too—the summer days with him. Just Cullen, just Solona.

Perhaps someday it will be so, and they can talk about Cliodna.

 

* * *

 

She cannot take the book with her, when weeks pass and Duncan recruits her into the Grey Wardens. She brings it back to him the evening before she leaves. They both regret.

There’s one last note inside the book. She can’t remember what she wrote. She would never be able to remember.

He holds her face in his hands one more time. It’s their silent, unspoken wishes of another time, another life.

She leaves the next morning. She thinks of Cliodna. She thinks of Cullen. Cullen. He is everywhere.


End file.
